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hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article that's questioning the very premise of the Apple v Samsung case. From the article: 'It isn't the first time Apple has been involved in a high-stakes "copying" court case. If you go back to the mid-1990s, there was their famous "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft. Apple's case there was eerily similar to the one they're running today: "we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating." Apple ended up losing the case. But it's what happened next that's really fascinating. Apple didn't stop innovating at all.'"

I'm in two minds, because the rumours highlighted in the summary specifically seem orientated toward creating panic and unrest within a large population - how do you deal with that while maintaining free speech?

By having free speech in the first place. These rumors can easily spread in China because a growing number of Chinese people believe that it's plausible that news of this kind of unrest could and would be suppressed by the government. The government's actions here are reinforcing that belief.

I once pointed out to a creationist that an intelligent designer probably could have done a better job with the human sinus cavity, and he attributed the problems with it to the imperfections in creation introduced after Adam and Eve's fall (that is, eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil).

theodp writes "Paul Miller has some advice for user interface designers: Don't be condescending. 'The Ribbon in Microsoft Office products,' complains Miller, 'is constantly talking down to me, assuming I don't know how to use a menu, a key command, or an honest-to-goodness toolbar.' Miller's got some harsh words for Apple, too: 'And of course, there is the transgression of the century: Apple's downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book...these new tricks are horrible and offensive [and likened to Microsoft Bob]. They're not only condescending and overwrought, they're actually counter-functional.' So, how does Miller cope while waiting for his UI knight in shining armor? 'I recently switched my Windows 7 install over to the Classic Theme', Miller explains, 'which is basically Windows 95 incarnate, just with all the under-the-hood improvements I've come to rely on. I really like it. It feels right, and if it isn't beautiful, at least it's honest. I wish there was a similar OS 9 mode for OS X.'"

When I visited Beijing during the summer six years ago, the Imperial Vault and the Hall of Prayers at the Temple of Heaven weren't visible from each other. According to this site, they're only about 360 meters apart. Smog limited the visibility at ground level to less than a quarter of a mile, and it has gotten worse since then.

No. There were allegations about Mr. Whiting that were made when things were getting rancorous. He's probably referring to those. Even if they were true, the people working for Cheyenne and who went on to form Fresh Start had much better reasons to leave long ago.

I know one engineer on the project who was a devote Christian and expressed some reservations about Stargate's idea of Ascension, but he acted sanely and left soon after they stopped paying him.

I was gone by then, but based on what I know of the people who started it, Fresh Start's goal was to continue supporting a game they believed in. While still at Cheyenne, they completed and released Resistance quickly under terrible circumstances (circumstances that I fled), only to be betrayed by Gary Whiting with a bankruptcy filing the instant they brought the company its first revenue ever. Then they managed to form a company to continue supporting the game. They kept the servers up and even released new maps and improved some of the graphics assets.

This article is 100% Mr. Whiting's side of the story. While at Cheyenne I formed the opinion that he is a very shady individual, but I was pretty low on the totem pole, so I don't know what was really going on.

What I know for sure, however, is that Resistance would never have come out without the people behind Fresh Start, and it probably would have been completely unsupported from the moment of release (possibly unplayable, with the servers down) without the formation of Fresh Start. So I'm going to give them a pretty fucking big benefit of the doubt.

Oh, and based on the financial situation when I left, the people working for Fresh Start were probably getting paid next to nothing, if that much. So obviously "stealing" pays big time.